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Lap dancing works well for the Bard
MEASURE FOR MEASURE
Rosemary Branch Theatre
LAP dancers gyrate to techno music and shimmy through the audience, making offers to take them backstage. Guys glance at their girlfriends, not quite sure where to look.
In the row behind me you could have fitted your foot into each of the gawping mouths of the men who tried and failed to take their eyes off a girl whose dancing was exposing her knickers.
I checked the programme. Yes, this was Shakespeare, so why did it look like Stringfellows?
But far from being an indulgent insult to the bard, this opening worked remarkably well.
It forced the audience to see the events of the play as not just relevant today, but relevant to them.
Everyone can be tempted: even the guy in the third row who’s only come to Shakespeare to get boyfriend points.
The play looks at a vice-filled Vienna, full of hypocrisy. The Duke pretends to leave, but instead disguises himself as a friar to stay around and watch what happens in his absence. Before long Angelo, his outwardly pious stand-in, tries to blackmail a virgin into sleeping with him before marriage to release her brother from a death sentence for the very same crime.
Whilst visually this sleazy modern interpretation of the play owed much to last year’s production at The National Theatre, The Rosemary Branch have replaced the unforgiving bleakness of that show with a youthful exuberance and optimism.
The young cast add pace and wit to a play that is usually performed with dry sobriety.
Even the curtain calls were taken at an enthusiastic sprint.
Until April 5
020 7704 6665
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